“Games that are Art” ORLY?
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Some days ago I got into a heated discussion about the game Proun, I’ll give you a quote from the creator:
“Games are art. Games are a new medium, not in any way less than sculpture, painting, film or music. Right now, we are still experimenting with the possibilities of games; we are like film in the time of the Lumiere brothers. Game developers have found some tricks that work and sell and that have grown the industry, but I believe we have only seen a glance of the broad possibilities of games. Maybe not all games have to entertain or educate, maybe there is room for games that are disgusting, no fun at all, or games that are just sad, or psychedelic, with their meaning slipping through your fingers like water. Games that broaden your mind. Games that are art.”
To me this sounds like bullcrap, first of all this guy this creator of the game Proun actually compares games to sculptures and paintings? Games that isn’t fun to play is not good games, even a scary and sad game should be fun to play or at least intriguing.
This guy says that his game is art, okay, in my experience games trying to be “Art” often ends up to be very poor games and I’ll tell you guys why.
Defining “Game”
I define a game like this: “A game is a problem-solving activity approached with a playful attitude” , a problem-solving activity is not a game. For example: work is a problem-solving activity but it’s not a game. You can turn into a game by approaching it with a playful attitude. “If I finish these documents within an hour I get cake” Do you see the difference?
A game can be sad of course but then you need to reward the player with something for his efforts: game-changing-mechanics, more interesting story etc.
Games consists of game-elements, four main categories, the pillars of every game.
- Story (Story of the game)
- Aesthetics (The graphics and art-direction)
- Game Mechanics (The rules of the game)
- Technology (The tech behind the game, game-engines and coding)
All of these game-elements must work together and if anyone of them are lacking they will hurt the overall rating of how good the game actually is. Game trying to be “Art” often try to emphasize on the Aesthetic element of a game, they do not put enough thought into the other elements and the game often ends up a poor experience. In this case: Proun is a racing game with pretty graphics, the player controls a ball that can only move around a pole-like-rail. The ball is constantly moving forward and the player must avoid the obstacles by moving the ball around the rail it’s attached to. A solid game-mechanic in itself but here is where the trick is, the game doesn’t have laptimes, no points and it’s without multiplayer-support.
A racing game without these things would end up a pretty poor racing game right? Proun is a game indeed, but without more thought into game-mechanics it will end up a really poor game, what’s the point when you don’t get rewarded with something valuable to the player? At least throw in a point-system or something in there, the players need better rewards or they won’t keep on playing, it does look fun though. It will be a freeware so I guess you could give it whirl but I like to spend my time playing games that I actually want to play, and then a game like Proun will end up lost between all other games.
Time to wrap it up
Though this post wasn’t actually meant to bash Proun, but it kind off ended up that way, sorry! I just want to tell the world the importance of game-mechanics and how it’s the most important thing when creating a game. Artists that want to use games as their medium for their artwork should not call their work a “game”, and if you are creating a game that you want to be art, make sure you actually focus on the game-mechanics. Aesthetics is only a tool to convey the atmosphere of the game and help the mechanics of the game make sense, because it’s with the gameplay of games, that these truly becomes art.
